Blogging the Microblogs

Photo Credit: Tormenta FC

I'm happy that USL League One is getting some coverage on CBS Sportsnetwork and it's even better when Tormenta gets to play on there like they did Wednesday night. Any time you can get some national coverage for third division soccer, you've got to be excited.

But despite subscribing to far too many steaming services, CBS SportsNetwork is not a channel I have access to, thus making covering the Tormenta/Naples game slightly more difficult. But we're not going to let a little thing like not being able to watch prevent me from writing a recap of the game. You all know me better than that.

I had big plans of trying to cover the game from both team's BlueSky accounts and try to write it based only on that. Unfortunately for me, Naples still doesn't appear to be on BlueSky and Tormenta uses it intermittently so there was a decent chance I'd end up with nothing.

Also unfortunately, both Tormenta and Naples are still on Twitter and post regularly there. I know people are still there, but the Twitter you remember is gone. In its place is a Nazi bar with a chatbot that regurgitates racist bullshit and called itself MechaHitler.  I keep hoping all the teams (and the league itself) will just leave and move to BlueSky or even Threads, but thus far it hasn't happened. I try to interact with every USL League One teams' posts on BlueSky just to increase engagement and encourage them to continue posting. 

Nevertheless, I waded into Twitter, pulled up the pages for South Georgia Tormenta and FC Naples and I'm going to follow the game as best as I can using only their Twitter accounts. Let's see what happens. 

7 p.m. - Both teams announce their starting lineups, with my oldest going nine for eleven in America's Favorite Game where he tries to guess the Tormenta lineup. Naples also lets us know it's White Out Wednesday for the game.

7:07 -  Naples posts a little promo video for the match, just 15 seconds long but it's pretty good. 

7:23 - Naples posts photos of their players arriving, wearing white. 

8:07 - Naples and Tormenta both post that kickoff has occurred and the game is underway. Now we wait to see what kind of details we get about the action.

8:13 - Tormenta posts the pregame starting XI photo and lets us know that Alon Drey has taken the place of Gabriel Cabral in the starting lineup. No word as to why Cabral isn't playing.

8:16 - Tormenta posts on Bluesky the same starting XI photo, no mention of Drey taking Cabral's place in the lineup, but I'll never complain about a South Georgia BlueSky post. More of that please.

8:23 - Tormenta posts that Marc Torrellas of Naples is issued a yellow card.

8:24 - Naples posts to let us know that  Torrellas, number 21, has been issued a yellow card. They include the number of Torrellas. 

Neither side lets us know what Torrellas did to earn the card, so it's left to our imagination. Presumably Tormenta was able to post it first because Naples was adding jersey numbers to their post.

I know Major League Baseball has a disclaimer that "Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited." I don't think I've ever noticed if the USL has a similar disclaimer and, if so, are the teams tweeting about the games violating that policy? Am I violating that policy by writing about the game here? If you share this with a friend, are you violating the policy? You know, sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind. However, if someone from the USL Office shows up at my door one day soon, I guess we'll have our answer.

This is where my mind goes when we're 25 minutes into the game and the only information either team has given us since it started is a replacement for a starter for mysterious reasons and a yellow card.

8:44 - Tormenta tweets a goal for Naples in the 36th minute.

8:45 - Naples again a minute behind, but for good reason as they have to get the Karsen Henderlong graphic for his goal and add that it was presented by Physicians Regional. Presumably Naples will tell us how he scored at some point.

8:49 - Tormenta tweets that Niall Reid-Stephen gets a goal for Tormenta to equalize in the 41 minute.

At the same time, Naples tweets a video of the Henderlong goal.

8:50 - Naples simply tweets "Tormenta gets one back" and then the score. They were about 35 seconds after the Tormenta tweet which, considering they'd just posted the goal from Henderlong, isn't that bad. Well done, Naples social media person.

8:52 - South Georgia posts that Alon Drey gets a yellow card in the 44th minute but no explanation is given.

8:53 - Naples, no doubt still dejected about the Reid-Stephen goal, neglects to mention the yellow card but lets us know we've got four added minutes to the first half. Tormenta, still upset about the yellow card to Drey, doesn't mention any added time for the first half.

This is our first divergence of coverage from the two sides. 

8:56 - Naples tweets about the yellow card issued to the FC Naples staff. Tormenta, seconds later, posts that Naples scored.

8:59 - Three minutes after first posted by Tormenta, Naples tweets about the goal by Luka Prpa. Again, we can assume the delay was to find the graphic for Prpa to add to the post, but a part of me wondered if the FC Naples staff that was yellow carded was the social media person and that's why they didn't tweet about the goal for so long.

9:00 - Tormenta posts that it is halftime with Naples leading 2-1.

9:02 - Naples posts a still photo of the broadcast showing the second goal. They still haven't acknowledged that it's halftime. 

9:06 - Naples finally posts that it's halftime with a photo.

9:13 - Tormenta beats Naples by a few seconds again in letting us know that the second half has started. Truly this is what the fans care about.

Tormenta has a pinned tweet, meaning each time I refresh their feed I have to scroll down past that post to get to the newest ones. Most of the time it won't make a difference as people aren't constantly refreshing the Tormenta page for updates. Normal people just see the update when it comes into their timeline. But for my purposes tonight, it's kind of annoying.

Was that paragraph just written because it's been 13 minutes into the second half and neither team has posted anything new? Absolutely.

9:27 - Apparently all I needed to do is complain in a blog post that hasn't been published yet and someone will tweet. Tormenta posts a video of Reid-Stephen's goal and it's quite nice.

9:30 - Lots of stuff suddenly happening. Naples making an "Ian for Ian sub"as Ian Garrett comes in for Ian Cerro.  Meanwhile, Tormenta with a separate post for their trio of subs, with Sebastian Vivsa, Conor Doyle and Jonathan Nyandjo in for Bazini, Drey and Tunbridge respectively.

9:31 - Tormenta posts the Naples substitution. Naples, as of yet, hasn't mentioned the Tormenta changes.

9:37 - Naples gets the video in to the post of their second goal. Tormenta has to have a better clearance there.

9:42 - Naples posts A pair of changes for the Florida side in the 72nd minute, with Tyler Pasnik and Kevin O'Connor coming in and Andres Ferrin and Luka Prpa coming off. 

South Georgia also posts the Naples changes.

9:43 - A minute later, Tormenta posts their substitution in the 74th minute as Callum Stretch comes off and Oscar comes in for South Georgia. Naples again neglects to mention the change for the visitors. 

9:54 - Naples out of the blocks early on the tweet, letting us know of two more subs as Gustavo Fernandes and Rodolfo Sulia are in and Henderlong and Torrellas are out.

9:55 - Tormenta a minute behind on the change. Interestingly, Naples has the substitutions at the 85th minute while Tormenta has them at the 86th minute. 

Ok, that's not all that interesting, but I'm dying here. I have no idea if this was a boring game and literally the only three noteworthy events were the goals or if neither team tweets close calls or what.

9:59 - Naples tweets that we're getting five minutes of stoppage time. It appears Tormenta is not going to share that information.

10:04 - Tormenta tweets the final score of 2-1. 

10:10 - Naples, clearly savoring the victory, hasn't tweeted that the game is over yet. Fans of Naples who are getting their info only from their social media are dying right now wanting to know what's going on.

10:15 - Tormenta posts the same graphic on BlueSky that they did on Twitter with the result of the game. I'm giving up on Naples posting the final score. I'm old and I have a busy day at work in the morning.

Edit: At 10:32, a full 33 minutes after letting us know there would be five minutes of added time, Naples finally posts the final score and lets us know the game is over. Following the game only via the FC Naples Twitter account would have been rough for those final minutes of not knowing what happened. 

So what did we learn from this. Well, first, I'm going to need CBS SportsNetwork to be a part of Paramount+ so I don't have to do this again. Second, following soccer through the teams' Twitter accounts is a terrible experience. And that's not to fault the social media people for each team. They have a lot going on and I'm quite positive they have more to do than just update Twitter with what's going on.

But despite that, it's just hard to get any sense of the game through just following it on social media. I have no idea if it was a wild, back and forth, wide open affair or if it was a slog other than the 10 minutes that saw the three goals. I'll watch highlights later to find out, but doing so before writing this seems like cheating.

I set out to see what the experience would be like following a game just through the teams' Twitter accounts and, friends, the experience is not good at all. Let's not do that again.